Tenuta San Guido Le Difese Toscana IGT 2022

Le Difese carries the DNA of one of the most consequential wine stories of the twentieth century. Tenuta San Guido is the birthplace of Sassicaia — the wine credited with launching the entire Super Tuscan movement — founded when Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, seduced by the wines of Bordeaux, planted Cabernet Sauvignon on his wife's coastal Bolgheri estate in 1944, initially just for family consumption. Sassicaia's reputation eventually grew so large that the Italian government created an entirely new appellation category just to accommodate it. Le Difese, introduced in 2002 as the estate's third and most accessible wine (after Guidalberto in 2000), takes its name — "the tusks" — from the wild boar depicted in gold on the label, a nod to the estate's wilder, wooded terrain. It's a blend of estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon with Sangiovese sourced from long-standing partners in Chianti and Chianti Rufina, since good Sangiovese is notoriously difficult to grow on Bolgheri's gravelly, maritime-influenced soils; the exact ratio shifts slightly by vintage, now overseen by third-generation family member Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta. The fruit is hand-picked, destemmed, and fermented with natural yeasts in temperature-controlled steel before ageing in French oak barriques and further refinement in bottle.

The result is deliberately built for immediate, generous drinking rather than decades of patience: crushed flowers, succulent red cherry, mint, and a lift of blood orange carry through a soft, textured palate of tangy cherry and dark hedgerow berries, finishing long, breezy, and gently balsamic. Critics have repeatedly called it "a total pleasure bomb" — Vinous and Decanter both scored the 2022 at 92 points — approachable and juicy while still carrying real Tuscan seriousness underneath.